Analysis of Photocurrent Generation within a Schottky-Junction-Based Near-Field Thermophotovoltaic System

Song, Jaeman; Lim, Mikyung; Lee, Seung-Seob; Lee, Bong Jae

doi:10.1103/physrevapplied.11.044040

Cited by 23 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…The radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale can be enhanced by orders of magnitude [1][2][3][4] due to the contribution of photon heat tunneling, especially when the surface phonon polaritons [5][6][7][8][9] or surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) [10][11][12][13][14][15] are excited. This phenomenon, known as the near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT), is promising for novel energy conversion technologies and nanoscale thermal management, including near-field thermostat [15], thermal routing [16], electroluminescent cooling [17], thermophotovoltaics [18], and thermal rectification [19][20][21][22], to name a few.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radiative thermal switch driven by anisotropic black phosphorus plasmons

He¹,

Qi²,

Ren³

et al. 2020

Opt. Express

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Black phosphorus (BP), as a two-dimensional material, has exhibited unique optoelectronic properties due to its anisotropic plasmons. In the present work, we theoretically propose a radiative thermal switch (RTS) composed of BP gratings in the context of near-field radiative heat transfer. The simply mechanical rotation between the gratings enables considerable modulation of radiative heat flux, especially when combined with the use of non-identical parameters, i.e., filling factors and electron densities of BP. Among all the cases including asymmetric BP gratings, symmetric BP gratings, and BP films, we find that the asymmetric BP gratings possess the most excellent switching performance. The optimized switching factors can be as high as 90% with the vacuum separation d=50 nm and higher than 70% even in the far-field regime d=1 µm. The high-performance switching is basically attributed to the rotatable-tunable anisotropic BP plasmons between the asymmetric gratings. Moreover, due to the twisting principle, the RTS can work at a wide range of temperature, which has great advantage over the phase change materials-based RTS. The proposed switching scheme has great significance for the applications in optoelectronic devices and thermal circuits.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radiative thermal switch driven by anisotropic black phosphorus plasmons

He¹,

Qi²,

Ren³

et al. 2020

Opt. Express

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“…The interference effect begins to emerge when the evanescent mode is spectrally suppressed by the PV cell, causing performance fluctuations of the TPV system, as opposed to an overwhelming near-field effect shading the interference effect in the general full spectrum regime. Such phenomena have already been addressed in several theoretical works [13][14][15] after the first report by Whale [16]. Although power output fluctuations with respect to the vacuum gap were observed at the vacuum gap near 1 µm between the propagating-mode-dominant far-field regime and evanescent-mode-dominant near-field regime to some extent in refs.…”

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confidence: 82%

Thermophotovoltaic energy conversion in far-to-near-field transition regime

Song,

Jang,

Lim

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Recent experimental studies on near-field thermophotovoltaic (TPV) energy conversion have mainly focused on enhancing performance via photon tunneling of evanescent waves. In the submicron gap, however, there exist peculiar phenomena caused by the interference of propagating waves, which is seldom observed due to the dramatic increase of the radiation by evanescent waves in full spectrum range. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the oscillatory nature of near-field TPV energy conversion in the far-to-near-field transition regime (250-2600 nm), where evanescent and propagating modes are comparable due to the selective spectral response by the PV cell.Noticeably, it was possible to produce the same amount of photocurrent at different vacuum gaps of 870 and 322 nm, which is 10% larger than the far-field value. Considering the great challenges in maintaining nanoscale vacuum gap in practical devices, this study suggests an alternative approach to the design of a TPV system that will outperform conventional far-field counterparts.

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“…It is well known that the performance of a TPV system can be enhanced when a gap between the emitter and the TPV cell is smaller than a thermal characteristic wavelength determined by Wien's displacement law [1,[3][4][5][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In this near-field TPV (NFTPV) system, thermal radiation exceeding the blackbody limitation can be transferred to the TPV cell due to the contribution of evanescent waves.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Alternatively, one can change the configuration of the TPV cell to further improve its performance [11,14,18,19,[21][22][23][24][25][26]. When an infrared reflector is applied to the backside of the TPV cell, the conversion efficiency of the NFTPV system can be significantly increased by reducing the absorption of the sub-bandgap radiation in the TPV cell [11,14,19,21,24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comprehensive analysis of optimized near-field tandem thermophotovoltaic system

Song,

Choi,

Lim

et al. 2021

Preprint

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It is well known that performance of a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) device can be enhanced if the vacuum gap between the thermal emitter and the TPV cell becomes nanoscale due to the photon tunneling of evanescent waves. Having multiple bandgaps, multi-junction TPV cells have received attention as an alternative way to improve its performance by selectively absorbing the spectral radiation in each subcell. In this work, we comprehensively analyze the optimized nearfield tandem TPV system consisting of the thin-ITO-covered tungsten emitter (at 1500 K) and GaInAsSb/InAs monolithic interconnected tandem TPV cell (at 300 K). We develop a simulation model by coupling the near-field radiation solved by fluctuational electrodynamics and the diffusion-recombination-based charge transport equations. The optimal configuration of the near-field tandem TPV system obtained by the genetic algorithm achieves the electrical power output of 8.41 W/cm 2 and the conversion efficiency of 35.6% at the vacuum gap of 100 nm. We show that two resonance modes (i.e., surface plasmon polaritons supported by the ITOvacuum interface and the confined waveguide mode in the tandem TPV cell) greatly contribute to the enhanced performance of the optimized system. We also show that the near-field tandem TPV system is superior to the single-cell-based near-field TPV system in both power output and conversion efficiency through loss analysis. Interestingly, the optimization performed with the objective function of the conversion efficiency leads to the current matching condition for the tandem TPV system regardless of the vacuum gap distances.

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Analysis of Photocurrent Generation within a Schottky-Junction-Based Near-Field Thermophotovoltaic System

Cited by 23 publications

References 50 publications

Radiative thermal switch driven by anisotropic black phosphorus plasmons

Radiative thermal switch driven by anisotropic black phosphorus plasmons

Thermophotovoltaic energy conversion in far-to-near-field transition regime

Comprehensive analysis of optimized near-field tandem thermophotovoltaic system

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